PODCAST: Dealing with social media ‘haters’

Advice and best practices from STCU’s Andrea Parrish.

As a digital marketing specialist, Andrea Parrish spends a fair amount of time dealing with “haters”: people on social media who aren’t happy with service, wait times, and so on.

But one instance stands out among all others, says Parrish, who oversees social media at $2.8 billion asset STCU in Liberty Lake, Wash.:

A local resident accused STCU of hosting a very inappropriate Halloween party, and left a scathing review ending in, “everyone I’ve interacted with was scraped from the bottom of the customer service barrel. Shame on you.”

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The problem was, STCU never held the party. A local bank did.

Parrish handled the situation the same way as she does for every negative review.

“First, I took a second to breathe,” she tells the CUNA News Podcast.

“Then, I corrected the factual inaccuracy—‘That was not us; that would never be acceptable here.’—thanked her for her feedback, and asked for more information so I could follow up.”

Eventually, Parrish “had a really great conversation” with this person, and addressed concerns from members who had seen the negative post.

“If we hadn’t responded, then her statement about STCU probably would have stood and continued to gain steam,” she says.

In this episode of the CUNA News Podcast, Parrish explains her approach to social media, why some of her best friends at STCU are compliance experts, how she conducted a social media risk analysis, the most common social media mistakes credit unions make, and more.

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